Vaughn to run

Vince Vaughn's favourite moment in Wedding Crashers, the bawdy romcom in which he stars opposite real-life pal Owen Wilson as one half of a caddish duo infiltrating weddings for purposes of casual sex, is one of sombre introspection.

'Wedding Crashers is about the evolution of guys,' he says, warming to a theme. 'To me, the whole movie is where Owen and I are sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It's the morning after and we're going, "Isn't this great!" But we're just on autopilot.

'These guys have been doing this for so long, they're older now, and what they're really saying is, "I don't know. Is this still great? I'm not sure if I feel the same any more." It's like when you hit 13 and you stop playing with your toys, these things you once loved that you've suddenly outgrown.'

This might strike anyone familiar with Vaughn's hedonistic image as significant. Has the 35-year-old, 6ft 5in star of such cinematic odes to Dionysus as Swingers and Old School hung up his party hat?

Certainly his appearance today - conservative grey suit, pale blue dress shirt, black brogues so new the leather soles are hardly scuffed - and his sober, articulate manner belie the tabloid-friendly hellraiser who was banned from all the bars in Wilmington, North Carolina, after a brawl.

He speaks in quick-fire, no-nonsense patter, rarely cracking more than a thin smile and has a well-honed ability to evade subjects he dislikes. Chief among those is the romance between his Mr & Mrs Smith co-stars, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and the gossip surrounding his relationship with Jennifer Aniston, with whom he is currently shooting the ironically titled romantic comedy The Break Up, in which they star as a divorced couple forced by circumstances into uneasy co-habitation.

Vaughn is altogether a more austere presence than either his reputation or 'Mr Sunshine' nickname suggest. 'As you get older, you see the bigger picture and you start to say, "I don't know if what I'm doing is cool any more. Is it getting a little sad, a little pathetic?"' He is quick to point out, though, that in spite of the Wilmington incident and a couple of other headline-worthy escapades, he was never the bad boy the press would have us believe. 'I like to go out,' he says.

'I like to meet girls. I like a drink and I like to have fun. But acting has always been my priority. What's always mattered to me most is the work.'

Nonetheless, there's an aura of authenticity to Vaughn's gallery of lovable rogues and meat'n'potatoes guys that makes it hard to believe they're entirely manufactured. 'To me,' he explains, 'the whole secret of acting is to make it appear as if you're not acting.

'The highest compliment anyone could pay me is to say it looks like I'm playing myself. But even with something like Swingers, which was based on me and Jon [Favreau, who also wrote the film], it's still highly exaggerated. You pick one facet of yourself and let that serve the character.'

There was a time, shortly after bursting onto the scene in Swingers, when it looked as though Vaughn was about to become a marquee name on a par with Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves. He certainly has the looks, the talent and the charisma. But it never quite happened, and he claims not to mind.

'I was offered some huge movies,' he says, 'but I didn't like the scripts. And I didn't really care. I'm just an actor and I respond to material that motivates me. I would do a big action film if I thought it was interesting. But I've never had a game plan.'

Growing up in a small town near Chicago, this determination to forge his own path meant Vaughn was labelled a rebel, and it's one he has never fully shaken off. 'If you think for yourself and you're an individual, you get looked on as a rebel,' he says. 'I was never a rebel, even at school.

'I just wouldn't take things at face value or accept that there was only one way to go about something. If there were kids in class who weren't considered cool, they were the kids I liked. I didn't give a shit about being popular. People would tell me, "Vince, you have to go to college". I never thought I had to go to college to succeed in life.'

After making the decision to pursue acting - prompted, he says, by learning difficulties that hampered his academic progress and by being 'no great shakes at sport' - Vaughn landed in Hollywood on the back of a TV commercial for Chevrolet trucks and busied himself with more ads and bit-parts.

The massive success of Swingers, which he gallantly attributes to best buddy Favreau, changed all that. But it didn't change Vaughn much. He has never been afraid to take a supporting role, surmising that it is often the juiciest part. 'You get the better lines,' he says. 'You get to swing for the fences because you don't have the burden of being calm for the audience - your job is to shake things up.'

That said, last year he did achieve something of his leading-man potential in the mega-hit comedy Dodgeball. 'I'm a big fan of Seventies movies and I find it more real when characters have flaws. I like them to struggle with something. Dodgeball is the journey of a sane man in an insane world.' Which might serve as an apt description of Vaughn's own down-toearth attitude to Hollywood. 'I've just moved back to Chicago,' he says, 'but I never really hung out with the Hollywood crowd. I couldn't be less interested in that.'

Which really leaves just two questions unanswered. 'No,' he grins briefly, 'I've never crashed a wedding. And no, I've never hooked up with a bridesmaid.'